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A Fire You Can't Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham's Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth

Name: A Fire You Can't Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham's Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth
Author: Andrew M. Manis
ISBN: 9780817309688

by Andrew M. Manis, Manisrew M.

Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Hardcover
ISBN: 9780817309688

Available to Buy

Synopsis of A Fire You Can't Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham's Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth

When Fred Shuttlesworth suffered only a bump on the head in the 1956 bombing of his home, members of his church called it a miracle. Shuttlesworth took it as a sign that God would protect him on the mission that had made him a target that night. Standing in front of his demolished home, Shuttlesworth vigorously renewed his commitment to integrate Birmingham's buses, lunch counters, police force, and parks. The incident transformed him, in the eyes of Birmingham blacks, from an up-and-coming young minister to a virtual folk hero and, in the view of white Birmingham, from obscurity to rabble-rouser extraordinaire. From his 1956 founding of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights through the historic demonstrations of 1963, driven by a sense of divine mission, Shuttlesworth pressured Jim Crow restrictions in Birmingham with radically confrontational acts of courage. Andrew M. Manis argues that, during a ministry that extended beyond Birmingham and into the 1990s, Shuttlesworth displayed in undiluted form the fiery, combative spirituality of African American religion. Throughout the book, Manis emphasizes Shuttlesworth's dual role as pastor and civil rights leader, stressing Shuttlesworth's understanding of his responsibility as a Christian minister as the driving force behind his civil rights activism.

Library Journal

In this intriguing work, the first full-scale biography of Birmingham's Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth ("perhaps the most unsung of the many heroes of the American civil rights movement"), religious historian Manis compellingly depicts a dual, combustible life. While providing insights into Shuttleworth's pastoral work and family life, he also offers a lengthy analysis of his subject's civil rights activities. He contends that Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference went to Birmingham on Shuttlesworth's direct invitation and that they owed their success there largely to Shuttlesworth's having organized a large and loyal cadre of demonstrators over seven years. It was Shuttlesworth's tenacity and courage, Manis suggests, that toppled Birmingham's virulent racism. Based largely on interviews with Shuttlesworth, this well-written and -researched book offers valuable new information and insights into a crucial era of Southern and African American history.--Edward G. McCormack, Univ. of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Lib., Long Beach Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.